Hot Takes & Cold Wars

In July of 2020, the Zimbabwean government formalized a compensation agreement of $3.5 billion intended to provide restitution to former white commercial farmers; compensation began being issued within the last year with beneficiaries from Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. This compensation program is integral to Zimbabwe’s international economic legitimacy after decades of exclusion. Zimbabwe is currently burdened by external debt obligations of around $11 billion, with substantial liabilities owed to sovereign and multilateral lenders. With these mounting external liabilities, efforts to renegotiate have drawn Zimbabwe further into the disciplinary mechanics of the international financial system, which has culminated in the International Monetary Fund staff monitored programme that was approved May 20th. With its ruling in von Pezold v. Zimbabwe, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has transformed land reform disputes into enforceable obligations within the global legal order. Zimbabwe’s compensation framework is part of a broader initiative to align with global norms and international economic normalization. Contemporary financial and legal narratives appear to obscure the original colonial expropriation central to the issues, an asymmetry that Tafi Mhaka highlights before reconstructing the historical trajectory of colonial domination that still shapes Zimbabwe today. Mhaka invokes his familial experience of displacement, which has been rendered juridically invisible within the epistemic framework of international law. Mhaka suggests that colonial expropriation has been relegated to inert historical memory with postcolonial redistribution being framed as disruptive to investor confidence, while the contemporary compensation regime restores settler property legitimacy. In recent years, Rhodesia has started to occupy a mythic, quite romanticized position within contemporary white supremacist movements, often being used as an ideological reference point within transnational white nationalist discourse. For me, any attempt to positively invoke Rhodesia as a model society is a remarkably efficient way to launder racial authoritarianism while still preserving a thin layer of rhetorical legitimacy. A brief historical detour: prior to independence Zimbabwe was governed as Rhodesia, a settler-colonial state named for the “founder” Cecil John Rhodes. Rhodes established the British South Africa Company (BSAC), was chartered by Queen Victoria which resulted in colonial conquest. By 1923 the BSAC charter was revoked with the British integrating Southern Rhodesia into their imperial framework as a colony. By 1961 European settlers constituted less than 5% of the population; this minority status was transformed into a catalyst for political solidarity, with the Rhodesian Front (RF) winning in the 1962 elections. The RF was organized around preserving white political supremacy, which makes the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 1965 considerably less shocking. In a feat of dialectical self-justification, the beneficiaries of racialized power relations had been rhetorically reborn as the victims of decolonization. The Rhodesian Front rendered the democratization of power as racial domination, while minority rule was a civilizational imperative. Opposition to minority rule resulted in expanded coercive capacity: censorship, mass detention, surveillance, and state violence. White minority rule ended in 1980, and political sovereignty was transferred; however, the economic conditions of the colonial state remained. Independence did not end the racialized agrarian order, patterns of external dependence, and peripheral location in the global hierarchy of production; structural asymmetries that would soon be exploited by international financial institutions. Escalating debt obligations accumulated during the 1980s left Zimbabwe, like many other postcolonial states, subjected to structural adjustment programmes. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank reorganized Zimbabwe’s economic policy around the prevailing imperatives of fiscal restraint, macroeconomic orthodoxy, and market liberalization. Unsurprisingly, the promised efficiencies gave way to industrial decline, deterioration of employment, and social retrenchment. The trajectory of Zimbabwe’s structural adjustment is emblematic of a broader adjustment paradigm that has been reproduced across postcolonial states since the late twentieth century. The IMF has acted as a gatekeeper, using its structural leverage as a mechanism to universalize market liberalization, privatization, and austerity across markedly divergent heterogeneous social formations. The recurrent elevation of creditor interests above social welfare and democratic accountability suggests that this is an underlying logic within the institution itself, rather than an institutional failure. This is an opinion piece, meaning Mhaka does not attempt to perform liberal neutrality. This article is a normative critique of global economic governance and colonial legality. Little to no analytical space is given to competing perspectives such as the European landowners (thank god as if they aren’t getting enough), Zimbabwe’s broader governance crisis, and its strategic pursuit of financial stabilization. The articles framing prioritizes the longue durée of colonial violence, expropriation, and racial segregation to situate settler land ownership as an institutional product of colonial domination. Mhaka mobilizes international arbitration to critique the racialized privileging of European claims within international legal discourse, while largely sidestepping the positivist contention that colonial era dispossession remains outside the temporal scope of international investment arbitration. Similarly, Mhaka presents debt normalization and farm restitution exclusively within the disciplinary logic of neoliberal reintegration and restoration of colonial property norms with no acknowledgment of potential strategic adaptations by the Zimbabwean state. To what extent are contemporary international economic and legal regimes perpetuating the reproduction of colonial power structures across postcolonial societies? Many might think of colonialism as a historical memory; however, this colonial power persists. The international architecture serves as the framework through which the distributive consequences of colonialism are normalized and reproduced; postcolonial sovereignty is limited, creditor interests are privileged, while the current distributions of global power and wealth are protected. What emerges is the familiar core-periphery structure: accumulation remains disproportionately concentrated in the Global North, while the Global South remains integrated through labor-intensive industries and commodity extraction. The form of domination has changed from colonial governance to conditionality, though the asymmetrical patterns of global accumulation and dependency persist.

Recent Indo-Pacific security discourse has been preoccupied with the topic of Japan’s remilitarization; producing divergent interpretations that reflect the struggle of competing historical consciousnesses to negotiate the ideological foundations of the postwar regional order. While this regional divide may present as a strategic disagreement, beneath this surface manifestation lies a deeper conflict over regional hegemony, unresolved historical accountability, and territorial contestation. Sheila Smith, CFR expert, locates a significant structural shift in Sino-Japanese relations with crisis-centered security logic has overtaken economic interconnectedness; these regional tensions have been amplified by Japan’s integration in Taiwan related alliance systems. Rhetoric from Sanae Takaichi, Prime Minister of Japan, suggesting that Chinese military action related to Taiwan would constitute a direct threat to Japan’s existential security have resulted in discursive rupture; though the underlying confrontational dynamic itself had already been incubating within expansion of alliance based regional strategy, securitization of economic relations, and diminishing domestic support for bilateral engagement. Beijing’s retaliatory measures have escalated through overlapping mechanisms that span multiple domains: diplomatic confrontation, strategic resource leverage, economic countermeasures, and regional counterbalancing. The Diplomat and The New York Times suggest the broader effects have paradoxically accelerated domestic backing for Japanese remilitarization, political realignment following the measures increasingly organized around realist security strategies. The antagonisms have migrated, now operating within multilateral institutions; where Chinese diplomats construct Japan’s military normalization as a challenge that destabilizes the norms and constraints structured by the historical consciousness associated with wartime militarism and imperial expansion in WWII. The Economist identifies a consequential shift in the triangular security architecture connecting the United States, China, and Japan. Informal diplomatic communication between Beijing and Tokyo have weakened through the decline in pro-engagement political actors in Japan, and the improved U.S.-China relations. The cumulative implication across these interpretations is that the prior interdependence-based framework that stabilized regional order has progressively collapsed, allowing mutually reinforcing antagonistic politics and strategic rivalry to become self-sustaining. While realist frameworks can describe the cyclical logic of antagonism and deterrence, they lack the ability to adequately theorize the historically produced identities through which security developments acquire their political resonance. Constructivism’s explanatory power is valuable when analyzing the Sino-Japanese dispute; explaining the underlying ideological and historical structures of the conflict. The contemporary Chinese perspective on Japanese remilitarization is not solely based on material power calculations, but emerges from historically sedimented structures surrounding imperial occupation, wartime atrocities, and the national narrative of humiliation; this has been formalized through state-sponsored historical rhetoric and educational efforts since the 1990s. Japan has long attempted to reconstruct its imperial era history in its domestic education system; these textbook revision controversies, and visits to the Yasukuni Shrine have been interpreted by Chinese media and government as evidence Japan’s militarist thinking has persisted. Japan’s imperial legacy functions as a cognitive filter through which China perceives the contemporary defense policies of Japan as a historically legible threat, regardless of strategic function or defensive justification. This construction of Japan as a former imperial aggressor within Chinese discourse and Japan’s narrative framing of China as a coercive authoritarian actor reveals the reciprocal process of Othering; each state increasingly perceives the other as an enduring source of regional instability and aggression. Historical discourse is not a passive participant in geopolitical reality; it governs the epistemic condition through which conflict becomes imaginable within the regional order. Each source analyzed here operates within distinct ideological and institutional frameworks that influence the interpretive constructions around these regional tensions. The piece from the Council on Foreign Relations proves to be the most analytically nuanced, yet still retains an alliance centered interpretive framework. While the U.S.-Japan security fears are analytically centered, China’s perspective lacks equivalent analytical depth; only acknowledged as the main source of regional tensions with Japan’s remilitarization is framed as a strategically commonsensical response. Despite its attempt to perform analytical neutrality, The Economist article is selectively constructed, downplaying the political, economic, and historical contexts that complicate China’s perception of threat in security discourse. In the article from The Diplomat, historical analogy is deployed asymmetrically; with Japan’s militarization being portrayed as strategically neutral, while citing China’s actions as politically consequential. The NYT article frames China as the reactive and monolithic coercive force, leaving the reciprocal dynamics and economic risks of confrontation largely undeveloped. AP News adds historical framing to the regional disputes; but the emphasis on the cyclical framing risks reifying conflicts as an ontological condition instead of a political dynamic shaped by historical circumstances. Reuters article is the most procedurally neutral source, including minimal editorial interventions; though the detached framing obscures the broader legal and geopolitical context embedded within the conflict. To what extent does China’s resistance towards Japan’s remilitarization emerge from authentic historical insecurity, and to what extent does it reflect a strategic securitizing practice to institutionalize the normative architecture of the post-WWII Indo-Pacific order? This dispute operates through a dual structure of historical consciousness and strategic securitization; they are mutually constitutive, operating within a self-reinforcing structure. China has not forgotten the atrocities that resulted from Japanese imperial expansion; biological experimentation, comfort women, forced labor, and Nanjing Massacre function as more than rhetorical symbolism, they are the interpretive infrastructure through which contemporary Japanese military developments are perceived as inherently destabilizing. These historical grievances are converted into geopolitical instrumentality with securitization logic, reclassifying Japan’s security expansion as an exceptional regional danger that threatens the postwar normative equilibrium. China’s historical memory supplies the symbolic grammar; securitization institutionalizes it into strategic discourse; the resulting escalation normalizes the conditions it sought to prevent.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the China-Russia partnership appearing with unusual density within news coverage. Instead of restricting this analysis around a single source, I’ve decided to cover four of them as a coherent unit. Collectively, these four pieces can reveal what no single article can: a partnership that is operating across four distinct registers: institutional, economic, strategic, and rhetorical. In How China and Russia Can Exploit the Iran War by Alterman and Vaez, Russia and China are framed as using the war to exploit the United States, draining power, collecting intelligence, and eroding the U.S. led order. Brunnstrom's article for Reuters describes Russia and China’s recent vetoes against the UN Security Council resolution on the Hormuz shipping protection. The U.S. Ambassador has accused the countries of aligning with the “regime”, while Moscow and Beijing have stated the text was one-sided and biased against Iran. In the AP News report Xi calls China-Russia ties ‘precious’ in current international context, we get to see the rhetorical register. Xi is describing the importance of China’s relationship with Russia; the language is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is worth taking seriously. He is positioning Russia and China as defenders with a moral warrant, all while framing the current order as being unstable. Lastly, in China condemns EU's inclusion of Chinese entities in sanctions package against Russia, we have arrived on the economic side of the partnership. The new EU Russian sanctions package is now targeting third countries that are supplying items to Russia, including China. Beijing has demanded immediate removal from the list, stating that any consequences would be on the EU. These four pieces, although they may differ in their content, create a similar architecture of assumption: a unified, disciplined, and ideologically aligned China-Russia bloc that is methodically dismantling American hegemony. It is not a claim that must be explained; there is no argument or construction required to create it. It is assumed, despite the power asymmetry of the current partnership, or the historical dynamics. Sino-Russian relations are historically rich, fascinating, and consistently antagonistic. Conventionally, it is tempting to default to Marx when thinking of this relationship, the Sino-Soviet alliance, then their split; ideology had made them partners. But it goes much deeper than Marxism-Leninism, with Tsarist Russia being one of the many imperial powers that carved away at Chinese land through unequal treaties. In spite of their suspiciously affectionate propaganda, the Sino-Soviet “alliance” was exceedingly less cohesive than the imagery had suggested. Stalin articulated a posture of resistance and antagonism towards Mao’s tailoring of Marxism to Chinese peasants, and he rejected the premise that Mao could unify China which he framed as attainable through Chiang, Mao’s opposition. Thus, Stalin spent almost two decades supporting a nationalist leader over a communist leader. The 1950 Treaty of Friendship and Alliance did not solve these issues; it instead, operationalized a hierarchy, allowing the USSR to exploit and keep the PRC dependent on the USSR. Eventually we arrive at the Sino-Soviet split: Khrushchev’s speech, USSR advisors leaving China, the Sino-Soviet border disputes, and lastly, Nixon visiting China, with the U.S. and China becoming aligned against Moscow. Despite what Western media might argue, this partnership is not old, nor is it that deep. This alliance was formed after 1991, a post uni-polar artifact that was derived from shared exclusion. Bobo Lo refers to this alliance as an “axis of convenience," a fragile and asymmetrical relationship that coalesces around a shared enemy, the West. The “axis of evil,” though originally used to reference North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, has grown to become an all-purpose designation of actors that the U.S. deems a threat to its hegemony. With some individuals using this rhetorical tool to merge Beijing and Moscow into an authoritarian threat unified against American primacy. The 2025 NSS reasserts this argument with the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” arguing that we must protect against hostile foreign incursion and stop predatory trade. This framing creates a unified enemy, which is a strategic asset that endeavors to justify civilization consolidation, expanding sanctions, and any further deployment. This “axis,” as it is, is a Western product; originally manufactured through gifting Beijing and Moscow with a shared antagonist and shared exclusion yet refusing to see that this alliance is a marriage of convenience rather than a marriage. All four articles are biased, but each of their biases are arranged differently across their distinct journalistic registers while eventually converging to reproduce a similar opposition to the Sino-Russian bloc. Alterman and Vaez’s piece for Foreign Affairs offers the most transparent example, especially in their verb choice throughout the article, and considering that both Vaez and Alterman are affiliated with policy think tanks, their framing is shaped by policy-oriented incentives not by neutral observation. Reuters report on the vetoes highlights the U.S. ambassador's opinion and, somewhat perplexingly, France’s (whose relevance is questionable and of limited consequence), though it at least highlights the reasoning behind Beijing and Moscow's perspectives. The Reuters report on the sanctions package appears to strategically pick the quotes it's using with excerpts being selectively curated to amplify their pejorative elements; I have yet to locate a full Ministry briefing to substantiate the full context of the quotes. The article from the Associated Press attempts to restrain its bias, opting to perform in a more comparatively neutral perspective despite its frequent reliance of scare quotes to subtly signal its framing. Is United States foreign policy serving as a mechanism of containment for adversarial behavior, or as a constitutive force generating the systemic incentives that manufacture it? The United States has historically manufactured its adversaries. There was not a pre-existing roster of enemies, so we created one ourselves. It’s not always an international threat either; they can be domestic as well. Such ‘threats’ warranted our military budget and our presence across the globe. Without a continuous threat being present, there would be no demand for it. Likewise, it offers domestic benefits; political unity and national unity through mutual fear. A way to bypass a political system that has been gridlocked, or collapse dissent by branding protestors as 'domestic terrorists'.

In this analysis, David Raikow frames the ongoing conflict in Sudan as a humanitarian emergency and a symptom of Western diplomatic decay. Though the death toll grows, the crisis in Sudan has failed to penetrate the hierarchy of western interests. Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo are central figures in this conflict. Both seemingly impervious to external diplomatic leverage, having built their careers within a regime that was acclimated to diplomatic isolation; thus neutralizing the standard Western repertoire of pressure, sanctions and mediation. Raikow singles out a potential vulnerability: both of the factions rely on external networks for fuel, mercenaries, weapons, and currency; drawing support from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia, Egypt, Colombia, Chad, Libya, and more. If these networks were disrupted, in theory, their capacity to wage war would be degraded, allowing alternative Sudanese actors open political space. This approach, however, requires continuous insight into the intentionally concealed logistics and financial pathways and precise coordination to avoid enabling outright dominance of either side, which Raikow argues would destabilize and further intensify violence in the region.

According to Raikow, the West presently lacks the diplomatic machinery to execute an operation as complex as this, consequences of the decades spent eroding its diplomatic institutions. Following the Cold War, the U.S. reduced its diplomatic infrastructure; cutting funding, shuttering USAID missions and embassies. European diplomatic services, long reliant on U.S. partnership, have simultaneously found themselves facing convergent pressures. Raikow concludes the article, asserting that Western states must explore every available avenue in Sudan, yet analytical clarity demands relinquishing the illusion that a non-catastrophic solution always exists. Sudan, through his framing, serves as a diagnostic stress test as well as a crisis, as it exposes the need for reconstruction of diplomatic institutions.

It seems almost perversely ironic that Raikow’s analysis is so in-depth, but omits something so important: The U.S. isn’t a spectator in Sudan’s conflict, it has actually played a role in sustaining the war. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the most enthusiastic importers of U.S. weapons, and a critical defense and trade partner. Despite the UAE’s scrupulously curated denials, the Sudanese government has accused them of supplying arms to the Rapid Support Forces, while mounting evidence appears to confirm these allegations. Though this may not be Raikow’s preferred mode of participation, the U.S. remains involved; occupying an advantageous and profitable position: brokering arms deals with the UAE, while taking the moral high ground by labelling the conflict a genocide.

Raikow cites the Clinton era budget cuts as the start of diplomatic erosion, yet doesn’t take into account the much messier history of that time. USAID cuts came after the 1994 midterm elections, which historically achieved the Republicans having a Congressional majority, and saw Jesse Helms (who was incredibly homophobic and racist) installed as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Helms had no interest in reforming USAID, his goal was to eliminate it entirely. Don’t worry though, the Clinton administration still had some involvement in Sudan during this time, like in 1998 when they had a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory bombed on fabricated intelligence.

U.S. involvement in Sudan has always operated the same way; instrumentally and episodically, reserved for occasions when Sudan is deemed useful according to Washington’s interests. During the Cold War when a failed communist-back coup convinced Nimeiry to realign with the West, we were heavily involved, with Sudan being the highest recipient of U.S. aid in sub-Saharan Africa. When Sudan turned more heavily towards Islam they became a target, when Sudan started offering intelligence on terrorist groups they became valuable again.

Raikow is assuming that if our diplomatic institutions weren’t deteriorated, our diplomacy could resolve the issues within Sudan. The article appears to be about Sudan, while in reality it’s about America. He regails us with the large loss of life, before insisting the issue is that we must restructure our institutions. History shows that the West has tried to assist; these interventions are well-documented, it's the reason the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was brokered. Issues in Sudan cannot be solved with increased staffing to the U.S. diplomatic corps. Western governments won’t account for, or fail to grasp the historical context of the area they are operating in; the colonial manufactured division, economic exploitation, and racial hierarchies.

David Raikow was once a UN diplomat, and an armed conflict specialist; having served in Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, and South Sudan. This positions him to be biased, he’s arguing for saving the institutional apparatus he once operated within. He’s framing the West as the much needed protagonist, and using the suffering of real people to prop up his views. Raikow does little to acknowledge the history, not just of Sudan, but of American politics as well. Name dropping the Clinton administration as being at fault without giving the full context.

Can imperialist nations truly assist in ‘fixing’ a postcolonial state without further reinforcing the dynamics and frameworks established by colonization?

A simple answer would be no. The longer answer is that nations should stop relying upon liberal peace framework to guide their interventions. The liberal peace playbook works under the assumption that if we make a country more Western by creating constitutions, building market economies, and holding elections that everything will stabilize. This is just another form of imperialism. Nations that want to assist should not arrive with plans for the country, they should be prepared to assist in implementing plans made by these countries.

In January of last year, the Trump administration imposed a freeze on humanitarian funding through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Very quickly, the downstream effects of these cuts materialized: closure of South African HIV clinics, suspension of medical services in Afghanistan, full elimination or reduction of global programs meant to address preventable disease and malnutrition. Further cuts to foreign aid followed, with Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom joining the United States. A recent studyLinks to an external site., by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, suggests that prevailing trajectories could engender an estimated 9.4 million supernumerary deaths by the year 2030. With 2.5 million of these fatalities befalling children under the age of five. The evidentiary basis is not ambiguous: utilizing two decades of data to delineate the critical impact of this assistance in containing the transmission of infectious diseases and depressing child mortality. The article covers the hermeneutic divide between the detractors and the architects of the policy. Representatives of the State Department and other administration officials maintain that the antecedent humanitarian aid paradigm cultivated a system of dependency, produced inefficiency, and created developmental stasis. They propose, in its place, an approach that favors facilitation of trade, investment, and opportunity. Experts in the field are critical of the administration's precipitous withdrawal, arguing that this decision is demonstrably yielding institutional degradation, preventable deaths, and the gradual constriction of economic and educational mobility in recipient nations. The already financially beleaguered United Nations is reluctantly shifting to a more triage-based posture; concentrating dwindling resources on programs that offer life-saving impacts. This article, intentionally or not, illustrates the Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST). The United States was designated, rather than elected, the unipolar hegemon following World War II. Upon becoming the global hegemon, the U.S. was assumed to bear the costs related to international order: acting as the global police to provide stability and security, open economic and stable monetary systems, and developmental aid. Predictably, the retraction of the hegemonic power results in systemic destabilization, a security vacuum. Redistribution of these responsibilities is not always self-corrected; secondary powers must have the incentive and the capacity to fill this gap. Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST) offers a simple and persuasive explanation of what Kent’s article is describing: the collapse of order upon hegemon retreat. Although HST and the article bypass any analysis on the nature of this order. Foreign aid is not the product of altruistic conviction; it has been more commonly used as a tool to further imperialism and colonialism. Long before our modern regimes developed, the Roman Empire utilized aid as a tool of statecraft; leveraging it as a means to expand influence and cultivate allegiance. Colonial powers have long used aid as a mechanism of control, strategically developing infrastructure which will benefit them: ports, roads, and railways to exploit regional resources and allow for easier deployment of colonial authorities. Aid still acts as an apparatus to further economic and political influence across the globe. Predatory western-led institutions like the IMF and the World Bank intentionally forced indebted nations to erode their own public infrastructure through the adoption of neoliberal reforms. These Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) revisions forced nations to restructure their economies; privatizing firms under state control, removing regulations and opening markets, reducing funding to public services, and prioritizing production of exportable materials. USAID itself largely benefits U.S. companies, who are the largest recipients of aid contracts, while a miniscule almost 10% of the budget is allocated to governments or organizations local to the region. The Trump administration's view of the current aid model cannot be outright dismissed, though it is absent of an operationally feasible replacement structure, because the historical scholarship of developmental assistance yields no shortage of cautionary exemplar in which aid was deleterious and ineffectual. It should be stated plainly: withdrawal of developmental assistance unaccompanied with a viable successor is negligence, not reform. This is just a critique of the colonial architecture of foreign aid, which operates as a tool to control, foster dependency, and impose austerity upon developing nations. The article contains clear sympathies for the loss of aid, and critical views on the Trump administration's “dismantling” of USAID. It offers an asymmetrical framing of the situation rather than a dialectic perspective. The heavy lifting is done by the author's lexicon, which uniformly reinforces a narrative that humanitarian aid is axiomatically necessary. Terms like “terminated,” “massive mortality declines,” “frantically reallocating funds,” and “the most life-saving measures.” Further support is brought by the research presented and its mortality figures, along with the expert testimony. Less emphasis is given to the opposing ideological stance held by the administration. Given the historical ties between foreign aid and colonialism, while considering the current system acting as a conduit for western corporate interests, should USAID remain shuttered, be restored to its prior operational capacity, or be reformed? The mortality projections allow for easy dismissal of leaving USAID in shambles as it is now. Despite the agency's flaws, USAID operated as a somewhat effective coordinator and principal funder of humanitarian relief efforts. I would argue that restoration of the previous system is flawed and has created the current crises we are in right now. Ideally, restructuring the current system would create a version of USAID that focuses on long-term development by enabling economic self-reliance, and investing in human capital and infrastructure. Developmental assistance should cultivate sovereign capacity rather than supplant it. Aid can be used to support a nation's autonomy and welfare, but it must resist reproducing neocolonial domination and structures of dependency.

SStar Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) serves as the epic conclusion of the original Star Wars series. The film's lead, Luke Skywalker, returns to his home planet of Tatooine to rescue his friend, and rejoins with the Rebel Alliance for their last campaign against the Empire. Luke Skywalker works as the transformational leader within this film; through inspirational vision, moral conviction, challenging assumptions and individualized consideration. Luke does not try to redeem Darth Vader through rewards or authority. Luke tells Vader, “It is the name of your true self. You've only forgotten. I know there is good in you. The Emperor hasn't driven it from you fully,” seeing beyond Vader’s Sith identity; challenging the status quo; encouraging him to reconsider his path. Luke is challenging Darth Vader to question his identity, to think past it. He believes in the inherent good in his father and compelling him to reclaim it. Shortly after Luke requests, “Search your feelings, father. You can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate,” he is attempting to appeal to his fathers identity and his autonomy, invoking him to restore his agency. Later, in front of Vader and the Emperor, Luke declares, "Never! I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” This statement reflects Luke’s idealized influence and inspirational motivation. Luke acts as an ethical exemplar; refusing to abandon his values; rejecting the offer from the Emperor. Luke is embodying the values, the ones he wants his father to reclaim. One of the most important lessons this film presents is belief in redemption and hope. Luke is willing to risk his life for his belief that there is good in his father. If Luke had abandoned this hope, Vader would not have been redeemed, the rebellion would have failed, and the Emperor would have remained in power. Perseverance acts as another lesson, characters in this film are often at a disadvantage, but still offering an improbable resistance. They endure, and persist despite it all. Last is collaboration, unity, and cooperation. Despite the initial issues between them, the Ewoks and the Rebels come together against a common adversary, leveraging each other's capabilities and knowledge to achieve what they couldn't alone.